Varg Vikernes expressed how he felt about tributes to Burzum and the toxicity of the Norwegian black metal scene centered around Euronymous of Mayhem in a new black metal history video to this ThuleanPerspective Youtube channel. Varg stated that the tribute bands are creatively inspired by him:

Enslaved‘s debut 1994 album Vikingligr Veldi is out on vinyl for the first time for all the crazy collector hipsters out there who need a CD on wax courtesy of Norse Music. The 2x LP comes in a gatefold sleeve and features a new layout designed by Zbigniew Bielak (Mayhem, Zom, Ghost).

Varg Vikernes uploaded another black metal history video to his ThuleanPerspective Youtube channel. In A Fatal Acquaintance (Euronymous, April 1991 – August 1993), the Burzum creator summarizes his relationship with Euronymous prior to their fatal fight on August 10th, 1993. Varg explains how the Mayhem guitarist was a fat Communist who stole the money used to preorder Burzum records and sunk it into his money pit Helvete record shop in Oslo.

Varg Vikernes has started posting a series of black metal history videos on his ThuleanPerspective Youtube channel. “About a day in 1993 that changed Black Metal forever” summarizes how Euronymous was completely unfit to run a business as a communist, bungled the release of the Burzumself-titled album, and how Euronymous’s clownishness ended his reign as the media’s go to spokesperson for the Norwegian black metal scene follow Varg’s arrest in connection with the church arsons.

Tagged as a death/thrash sort of cross-over band, Amok, at least in the present album, sounds much closer to hardcore stemming from the tradition of Discharge Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing and filtered along the line of Amebix Arise!. Some gestures of 80s heavy metal show up but only briefly and not prominently enough to turn this into one of the many kinds of so-called “melodic death” bands out there. In Necrospiritual Deathcore a healthy, coherent mixture of different punk and metal expressions collide to form an enjoyable album.

Like any hardcore album worth its salt, we find fragments of speech taken from television or radio, snippets of urban audio, coughing, among the rough scream-barks of the vocalist. All this, combined with the great pains to which Amok goes to give this album musical variety despite the fact that the music is primarily percussive (and simple in its percussion). Commendable are the smooth tempo changes in the album that are never abrupt even though they change the music drastically. Voice and instruments conspire so that the “line” is never broken when going from a faster speed to a slower one. When it comes to accelerating, though, the punks show themselves.

On the other hand, given the simplicity (and I mean real simplicity) of each song and the fact that the album is a song-collection (rather than a concept album, or a greater work, or a set of variations), the staying power of this kind of record is very limited. Sounding like a more single-minded, less flexible Amebix, Amok Necrospiritual Deathcore will please and entertain, but there is little reason to continue listening to it when there are albums like Arise! lying around. All in all, it is a refreshing hardcore album with heavy and death metal colors done by expert musicians.

Self-identifying as death metal on the “brutal” spectrum, Deathseeker actually playing something more akin to the groove metal of Lamb of God without engaging in the jumpiness and maintaining a stabler basis. Rather it is based on chugs and rhythmic tremolo-based bursts while vocals accentuate in unvarying and short phrases. While it is hard to call this death metal at all, it is closer to an industrial-influenced groove metal whose central focus is that of heaviness itself. As such it loses vision of musically constructing anything beyond immediate and banal pleasure.

Deathseeker has been in the making for some time already but the creation process has been a recent affair. Now the band is set to release a full-length album, even though they have not given a particular date yet.